It was rainy and chilly at the annual Royal Ambassador (RA) Congress, held March 12–13 — that probably explains it.
Both teams are always well represented, but when it’s cold as it was this year and the crimson coats and orange and blue toboggans and sweatshirts haven’t been packed away yet, the allegiances really stand out.
For instance, Matt Smith, minister of students at Hillcrest Baptist Church, Enterprise, was wearing a University of Alabama sweatshirt as he walked by the baseball toss area. The kid who accidentally beaned him was wearing an Auburn University sweatshirt.
“Ow,” Smith said. “What are you trying to do — get me back for the Iron Bowl?”
Everyone within earshot laughed.
There was a lot of that going around among the 510 participants from 44 churches at this year’s congress, the 69th in the state convention’s history and the 19th held at Camp Grandview in Millbrook.
Joe Brothers, keeper of the legendary climbing wall, was getting the harnesses ready for the next boy in line, who happened to be wearing crimson.
“Come here, Bama. But first you’ve got to take that old, ugly coat off,” said Brothers, an RA volunteer and member of First Baptist Church, Glencoe.
Bama started to oblige. The climbing wall, after all, is the climbing wall, an event so popular among the Lads (first- through third-graders) and Crusaders (fourth- through sixth-graders) that Brothers now requires they complete six other events — blow darts, hatchet toss, slingshot, whatever — before climbing.
“Otherwise they’d be here with me all day long,” he said.
“Oh, I’m just kidding,” Brothers said to Bama. “Here, strap this on.”
After all, team loyalty is one thing — Christian unity and discipleship are something else.
“This is for the kids. I just mess around with them,” said Brothers, who has brought and set up the climbing wall for the past 12 years in part to show that “believers in Christ can do crazy things, too.”
This was 10-year-old Braxtin Smith’s first year to attend the congress; his favorite crazy thing is the blow darts.
“I think [the congress] is awesome,” Smith said. “Especially the camping. I like learning about God, and it’s like all of the events talk about God in them.”
Both Smith and his friend Jordan Hall, 10, have been in the RA program at Eastmont Baptist Church, Montgomery, since they were in first grade.
What would they tell someone who is thinking about joining RAs but isn’t sure about it?
“We actually have a friend like that,” Smith said.
“I just try to tell him about all the things you can do,” said Hall, who’s more into the hatchet toss. “And tell him some Scripture.”
He hit the bull’s-eye with that answer, as that is the purpose of RAs: to impart Baptist boys with a biblical appreciation for the missions field.
“God does great things in the lives of these kids,” Matt Smith said. “They get to come together and work together as a team putting up their tents and things, but they also learn God’s Word.”
That’s what makes it worth it every year, said Steve Stephens, RA consultant for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
“[The congress] is something that takes a lot of work, and it’s a lot of stress, and I’m continually, all week long, taking things up there and getting materials, but that’s the reason it’s all worthwhile,” Stephens said. “It’s just great that the boys can come and have just a good, fun time. But the leaders make it.
“It just amazes me that they’ll come from Dothan, Mobile, Huntsville … that they’re willing to bring the boys that far.”
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